HOT summer, lots of rain :(

What started as a fantastic start to my seedlings has been a disappointing mid/late summer thus far. Temps consistently in the 90s with blossom drop, with a lot of rain have given my raised bed peppers wet feet. I'm not seeing a lot of blooming at all on the cayennes.
 
Is there anything anyone can recommend? Miracle-gro bloom booster?

peps22 said:

What started as a fantastic start to my seedlings has been a disappointing mid/late summer thus far. Temps consistently in the 90s with blossom drop, with a lot of rain have given my raised bed peppers wet feet. I'm not seeing a lot of blooming at all on the cayennes.
 
Is there anything anyone can recommend? Miracle-gro bloom booster?

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Peps, you & I live a few miles apart. We've danced around on growing methods... While I know your "growing area" different from mine the only thing I can advise...... CHANGE!
 
See below for pics of my 2018 grow..
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
You seem to constantly have growing issues - Thinking of transitioning to raised beds in 2017.. I generally have success... I'm not pushing your face in mud.....me successful - you failure....  I'm saying that we live so close to each other why do we have so different results?

You decide.... Wanna' chit-chat about what has worked for me (I have grown in ground & in pots.) or what can work in your neck of the woods (This is a perfect thread to help you or others here in New England.). My advice? A total revaluation of your growing methods as lately you have been on the down side of pod production.  I love to help everyone/anyone but New England (Edit) residwents residents rock!!

Let me know,
NECM

At the end of the day, the 5-6 hours of sun in my back yard is probably not enough to dry things out over the course of a summer. If we have a dry summer, its probably ok. I normal or wet summer, I guess it will never be a great garden. At my old home, I had 12-15 hours of sun a day, and this was never a problem. I guess I'm just refusing to give up on in-ground gardening.
 
BTW - I do use pots - I have 4 of them. And I agree, the performance is better. I just hate the clutter of them on my deck.

peps22 said:

At the end of the day, the 5-6 hours of sun in my back yard is probably not enough to dry things out over the course of a summer. If we have a dry summer, its probably ok. I normal or wet summer, I guess it will never be a great garden. At my old home, I had 12-15 hours of sun a day, and this was never a problem. I guess I'm just refusing to give up on in-ground gardening.

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Oh, I feel your pain. It's been like that most of my summer, too.

peps22 said:

At the end of the day, the 5-6 hours of sun in my back yard is probably not enough to dry things out over the course of a summer. If we have a dry summer, its probably ok. I normal or wet summer, I guess it will never be a great garden. At my old home, I had 12-15 hours of sun a day, and this was never a problem. I guess I'm just refusing to give up on in-ground gardening.
 
BTW - I do use pots - I have 4 of them. And I agree, the performance is better. I just hate the clutter of them on my deck.

Click to expand...

 
Unfortunately our NE summers are why I grow exclusively in containers. We tried in the ground years ago and results were bitterly disappointing. Most of our container growing has been on the back deck which only gets about 5 hours of sun and every drop of rain that falls from the sky. My solution has been a container mix with lots of extra perlite for drainage (about 50:50) in containers with very large holes. I can always water them myself in the dry years. I've barely touched a watering can this year.
 
Up until July of this year I've used osmocote with meh results. This year I used my own compost as a top dressing (about 1/2") on the containers and the plants took off even with the massive amounts of rain we've had. I will sing the praises of a compost top dress till the day I die. Every time it rains or you water you get effortless 'compost tea'. I wish I could tell you what will help for this year, but I have no solutions. I'm still learning this craziness myself.
 
The short story is simply that containers were the only way I could get results instead of headaches.
 

i`m in connecticut with the same weather as you. after a week and a half of heavy rains we are now back to the heatwave. all of my plants are in containers with miracle grow potting soil with about 10% Black Kow cow manure sold at the big box stores. containers have many holes drilled in the bottom. they must have good drainage because all the rain we had this summer never caused any problems. i had some flower drop a couple of times this year with the 90+ temps but i also have gotten good amounts of pods off all plants. they get 8 or 9 hours direct sun. is there a sunnier area of the property that you could utilize instead of where you grow now? also, what type of soil do you have in the raised beds? 

I'm located in the NE as well right near the Connecticut border, the two weeks of brutal rain we got was wicked. I realized it was a problem last year and so this year I Changed all of the soil in my beds (raised and not) to high drainage and created mound and troughs  system so that even if we got drenched for a while the top 6 inches of the root system could dry out. It worked wonders for the plants, it even made feeding easier and I had a better uptake of nutrients because of it. I use a 65/35 ratio of (Vermiculite+perlite/Soil) I also treat with sulfur before the season and before I know rain is coming to try to avoid fungi. So far this season has shown much promise.
 

The recent heatwave kickstarted my plants again. They're really putting out pods now, which are ripening more quickly. Temps are dropping again and there's a low possibility of thunderstorms every day for the next several days, but I think these plants are gonna pump out the pods. A few got whacked and didn't really come back, but I'm impressed by the resilience of these peppers. Tougher than my maters.